Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Origins Of Iraq’s Ethnosectarian Quota System

Iraq’s
ethnosectarian quotas are a mainstay of the country’s political system. There
are arguments going on about it right now as Prime Minister Haidar Abadi is
unsuccessfully trying to name his own ministers without having to follow them.
Most people blame the American Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) for
institutionalizing the quotas when it put together the Iraqi Governing Council
based upon sect and ethnicity, which was then duplicated in the interim
government led by Iyad Allawi and every administration afterward. What is far
less known is that the opposition to Saddam came up with quotas long before the
U.S. invasion.

Blame for Iraq’s
ethnosectarian quotas usually rests with the United States, and for good
reason. In July 2003 the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) created the Iraqi Governing Council. The 25 member group was made up of 13 Shiites, 5 Sunnis, 5
Kurds, 1 Turkmen, and 1 Assyrian Christian. In doing so, the U.S.
institutionalized the idea that the government should be broken up proportionally
according to the country’s different groups. The cabinet of interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi followed that pattern, and every government that came
afterward. Because of that history most would think that was the start of the
practice, but it actually began years beforehand amongst Iraqi exiles.

During the 1990s
there were several conference of Iraqi parties opposed to Saddam Hussein, one
of which took place in Vienna in June 1992 that was based upon quotas. Most of the major groups
except for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) attended. There were 170 delegates that were determined by a
quota system to try to balance the Islamist parties with the others. The
religious parties got 35.5% of the representatives, the western style liberal
democrats and independents, received 35.5%, the Kurds 23.5%, and the Turkmen
5.8%. The meeting led to the creation of the
Iraqi National Congress (INC), which was supposed to be an umbrella
organization. The decision on the representatives, while not completely based
upon ethnicity and sect nonetheless set the stage for more explicit ones later
on.

Massoud Barzani
called for another conference to be held in Kurdistan in October 1992 dubbed
the Salahaddin meeting. Again, the organizers came up with fixed numbers for
those attending, this time more explicitly mixing religion and ethnicity along
with political ideology. There were to be 33% Shiite Islamists, 25% Kurds, 16%
Arab nationalists, 6% Turkmen, 4% democrats, 4% liberals, 4% Iraqi tribes, 3%
Communists, 3% Assyrians and Christians, and 2% Sunni Islamists. In total, 234
people showed up that included the Iraqi National List, the Iraqi Communist
Party, the Iraqi Democratic Party, the Independent Iraqi Authority, the Islamic
Supreme Council of Iraq, Dawa, the Islamic Action Organization, the Iraqi
National Turkmen Party, and others that covered 90% of the opposition parties.
At the end a three man presidential council was decided upon to lead the Iraqi National
Congress. Again, the presidents were given to one Shiite, one Kurd, and one
Sunni, which were Mohammed Ibrahim Bahr Uloom, Massoud Barzani, and General
Hassan Mustafa Naqib. The Salahaddin conference showed that the anti-Saddam
groups believed they needed quotas to include the wide variety of groups
committed to the cause. They were also moving towards having those based more
upon ethnosectarian criteria, than politics, which was the original reason they
were used at the Vienna meeting.

In February 1993
there was another meeting of the INC’s presidential council in Irbil. It was
decided that a consultative committee should be formed. Originally that was
made up of 10 people, but then expanded to 26 to become an executive council,
which was led by Ahmed Chalabi. Of those members, 33% were given to Shiite
Islamists, 25% to Kurds, 7% to Sunnis, 6% to Turkmen, 6% to Assyrians, and 3%
to secular and liberal parties. Here the participants were almost all based
upon ethnosectarianism.

Many of these parties
would return to Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion and become involved in
politics. Some would gain seats on the CPA’s Iraqi Governing Council, and then
the governments formed after 2005. It’s not clear whether they suggested quotas
to CPA head Paul Bremer or the Americans thought of it their own. What the
1990s meetings showed was that the exiles were all familiar and comfortable
with them as they had been using them for over a decade.

SOURCES

Aaron, Daniel Meyers, Marisa, “Cost of
Exile: The Role of the Returning Exiles In Post-2003 Iraq,” The Institute for
Middle East Studies, The Elliott School of International Affairs, The George
Washington University, May 2014

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the politics, economics, security, culture and history of Iraq via original articles and interviews. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com